You’re nearly there now. With less than ten days to go until Christmas is upon us once again, you may have planned and budgeted for this moment over much of the past year. Now you’re nearly there… and yet this eleventh hour, so to speak, can be more tempting than the rest of the year put together.
You may have had a savings plan in place since January as part of last year’s New Year’s Resolution. If you have, you’ve already gone through weeks and weeks of planning, saving and budgeting. You may well have saved up plenty in your savings or investment accounts over the past few months. Whatever your plans are for that cash, chances are those plans don’t include Christmas splurging. Ideally you’ve got a separate budget for that.
But then Christmas is actually – finally – just around the corner. Lights are twinkling, the festive trees are everywhere, people are caught up buying presents, and everyone is busy. It’s great to be in a position where you’re getting excited about the festive season and enjoying everything that comes with it. Yet one of the things that comes with it for many people is the stress of figuring out what to buy and how much to spend.
Again, planning can get you out of trouble here. However it’s still easy to be tempted to dip into those funds you’ve steadily been building up and investing over the past 12 months. When this happens you can wreck all that good work and those good intentions in moments. Especially if you happen to have a credit card handy.
If you’re in this situation now and temptation is beckoning in some way (regardless of whether it’s in the form of extra gifts, more food or simply ‘stuff’), take a moment to think. This is the best way to ensure you don’t spend January and beyond trying to put all your hard work back together again. It is incredibly easy to wreck your good intentions in moments if you’re not careful. Make sure this doesn’t happen by focusing on everything you have achieved financially during 2014. This should help ensure you don’t blow your hard work in a short space of time. Think about all the individual financial decisions you’ve made and the sacrifices you’ve made to get to where you are now. Think how hard it would be to start over from that same stage again. Do you really want to blow it?
Being able to keep a level head financially at this time of year is crucial. Those who don’t end up with a challenge come January. This challenge normally involves how they’re going to figure out how to pay their credit card bill and stay in the black at the same time. If you want to keep on going with your good efforts, let that temptation naturally dissipate now. Leave your savings and hard work untouched and celebrate the success of your resolution now. Then you can keep on going into 2015 too.
